I Am The Manipulator of the World
by Midnyght Saber
Summary: What if the Gauntlet Danny destroyed in "Reality Trip" was a fake? What if he kept the original? What if he decided to keep the Gems for himself? This story looks into a possible reality where Danny decides to take it upon himself to be master of the gems
1. I Am A Liar

**Disclaimer: **_Danny Phantom_ and all related characters and information are the property of Butch Hartman and Viacom International, Inc.

* * *

Okay, so this wasn't supposed to be out for another month or two, but seeing as I hit _another_ brick wall with my writing, I figured I could afford to let some of the stuff that I've finished be submitted so that there's something there until my brain kicks back into gear and I can get back to the rest of my work. I've been pretty hung up on where to go with a few of my stories, so it may be some time before the stuff I was supposed to release is actually ready to go. Regardless, I do intend to have all my work done by the end of the year, save for whatever new ideas may pop up from time to time.

* * *

Danny opened the drawer under his computer, glimpsing just the barest hint of the Reality Gauntlet hidden in there. Assured that it was secure, Danny made sure of that. No one knew he had the Gauntlet, but just to make sure that it would be left alone, he locked the drawer. Slipping the key into his pocket, he grabbed a box from under his bed, pulling the lid off, and he smiled despite himself. There, looking for all the world like the real thing, was the replica Gauntlet he'd spent the last three days putting together out of scraps from his parents' inventions and a few home-grown crystals.

Sliding the phony Gauntlet onto his right arm, he flexed the fingers, making sure that this thing would pass as the real thing long enough, he turned invisible, phazing out through his room wall and landing in the gangway between his house and the one next to it. Bringing the familiar rings into place at his waist, he let their light shimmer just long enough for Sam and Tucker, both of whom were waiting for him on the front stoop, to believe that he'd just landed and transformed back into his human form.

Walking out of the causeway, Danny smiled and waved at his two best friends.

"You took care of the Guys in White?" Sam asked.

Danny nodded. "So, that's it. I set everything back to the way it was before. Nobody knows I'm half-ghost except for you two and Jazz." He looked at the metal glove wrapped around his arm, a replica of the ancient artifact that had nearly ruined his entire life. "Now it's time to destroy this thing for good."

Dash and Paulina's sudden appearance forced Danny to hide his arm behind his back, and after they had come and gone, and he, Sam and Tucker has come to an agreement that their exploits to save their families was enough road trip for one summer, Danny looked at the Gauntlet again, transforming into his Phantom alter-identity. "Alright, then – time to finish this." Taking to the skies, Danny launched the piece of scrap metal into the air, pulsing out an immensely powerful ecto-blast, watching in satisfaction as the item he'd spent many sleepless hours constructing and honing into a perfect copy of the original burst into pieces of material that would no longer be able to be identified, much less put back together. Looking down, he saw Sam and Tucker wave good-bye, and he turned and flew off into the warm, welcoming summer sky.

"Hey! Yeah, you! You got a lot of nerve floating around like that!"

Danny looked down at his house to find his father pulling a Fenton Bazooka onto his shoulder.

"I get my hands on you, I'll tear you apart molecule by molecule!"

And there was the age-old threat, one that, indeed, Jack had already apologized for, but as he no longer remembered that event, the fact that Danny Phantom was his own son failed to register. Dodging out of the way of the fired blast, Danny waved at his dad. "Have a nice summer!" he called out, only to find himself catching a toned-down secondary blast in the rear as he was flying away from town.


	2. I Am An Inventor

**Disclaimer: **_Danny Phantom_ and all related characters and information are the property of Butch Hartman and Viacom International, Inc.

* * *

Danny sat at his desk, staring down at the image of the Gauntlet in the book sitting before him. Having 'borrowed' the book from Sam, Danny had been pouring over the information for nearly four hours, flipping back and forth between the thirty-four pages of text written by Frederick Isak Showenhower…or Freakshow, as he'd come to call himself.

With all the people involved either having forgotten about the Gauntlet or convinced that it had been destroyed, he honestly had all the time in the world to delve over this and wonder just how it would be possible to use the Gems without having to wear the Gauntlet. Flipping back to the earlier pages of the entry, Danny decided to actually read through it rather than skimming it as he had been doing.

_The Reality Gauntlet is a powerful item not in its own right, but through the powers of the four Gems placed within it. All four of the Gems, though having physical form, are actually made of pure ectoplasmic energy, though how their creation came about is a mystery lost to the ages. These ghost gems, as they are, contain a combination of four powers that allow one to bend the rules of reality to the user's whims._

_The ruby, forged in the shape of a square, contains the primordial forces of existence, thereby earning its title as the Gem of Life. Able to imbue even non-living materials, such as stone or metal, with the basics of life and survival instincts, this Gem can bring anything the user wishes to life, regardless of its state of being. Additionally, this Gem has the power to return life to things once dead, but it is preferred that the user also use the Gem of Form to assure that the once-dead creature is transformed back into its pre-dead state. On a final note, when this Gem is being used in conjunction with the remaining three Gems and the Gauntlet, it has the power to end life as well, extracting the spiritual essence from the being, whether it have been alive of its own right or granted life by this Gem._

_The topaz, diamond-shaped, is able to reform anyone or anything into another form through the power of the user's whims, and is thereby called the Gem of Form. An example of which would be turning a train car into a pickup truck or a fish into a chicken. These are only basic examples, as the Gem's power increases as the remaining Gems become active, allowing unlimited transformation potential once the entire Gauntlet has become active._

_The circular sapphire has the ability to give form to the thoughts and dreams of the user, regardless of the presence or lack thereof of any physical material by which to create these things. Obviously the most powerful of the three Gems, the Gem of Fantasy, as it is called, is only able to be used when the Gauntlet has been activated._

_The triangular garnet, the Gem of Power, serves only one purpose – powering the other three Gems. Its presence is necessary to unlock the Gauntlet's true powers, but the combination required to activate the Gems – pressing the Gems in a certain order after they are placed into the Gauntlet – has been lost to time._

_The Reality Gauntlet, though it looks as if it is the creation of a medieval society, is actually far younger than that. Renowned paraphysicist Randolph Bernard Showenhower actually built the Gauntlet after discovering the power laying dormant within the Gems, the four crystals having been passed down in the family line for generations in necklace form, inherited alongside the Staff of the Ghost Orb, used in the family as a means of placing ghosts in thrall._

_Though created in the late 1800s, the Gauntlet is nothing more than an alloy of copper and gold, metals known for their ability to conduct electric current, and that is the exact reason these metals were involved in the Gauntlet's creation at all – the Gems' powers work like electricity, interacting with one another to provide the necessary powers to bring forth the changes commanded by user._

From there on out, the remaining pages went into the lore revolving around the four Gems and the reason behind their creation, but Danny had actually found what he was looking for – the means by which the Gems work. The Gauntlet was nothing more than a showy conductor, really only an elaborate piece of costume jewelry, made only to aid in the conductivity of the Gems' energies.

_If that's the case, _Danny thought, his mind wandering. Looking down at his backpack, carelessly tossed aside into the corner of his room, he regretted the fact that school had been let out the week previous. His biology book would have come in handy right about now. _Well, there's always talking to my parents…_

- - - - -

"Mom, I have a question," Danny said softly as he twirled his fork around in the spaghetti he'd been served.

"What is it, sweetie?" she asked, noticing that Danny hadn't touched his food. "Are you feeling alright?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. I just…I don't have any idea why the thought crossed my mind, but does the human body conduct electricity normally, or does it always cause massive damage?"

Maddie raised an eyebrow, but shrugged it off, finally glad to see her son interested in more academic pursuits. "The human body isn't built to withstand massive electrical currents, no, but it does have a minor system of bioelectrics built into it."

"The nervous system?" he asked, and both Maddie and Jazz looked at him, smiling.

"Yeah, as a matter of fact, that's just it," Jazz answered for her mother.

Jack nodded in agreement, his mouth too filled with food to allow him to respond in any other manner.

"Minor currents can be used, without injury, to return the body to its natural state, such as the paddles used to restart a person's heart, but anything too high can be anywhere from damaging to deadly," Maddie said, looking for any sign of resolve in Danny's eyes.

"So what if there's a conductive line? You know, something like lightning rods for buildings?"

Jack piped up, having swallowed the enormous amount of food he'd been eating. "Like a piece of metal running down your back or something?"

"I guess so. It's just…you know what it was that started this?" Danny said, finally figuring out his cover story. "I was thinking about rain for some reason, and then the thought crossed my mind – why do some people survive getting hit by lightning and others don't?" In the back of his mind, however, he was slowly realizing that this would need a moderate bit of thought before he could dismantle the Gauntlet and actually use the Gems for his own purposes.

- - - - -

After he was sure that his parents were asleep, Danny snuck out to the shed, phazing through the door and using a small ball of ectoplasm to search for the piece of metal he needed. Since his parents used titanium plates when they made their inventions, there would have to be a scrap piece of it lying around somewhere. Leaning down, Danny began rooting through the boxes, searching for a small piece about the width of two fingers and a little shorter than his forearm. Scrounging around, he moved the first box aside, finding nothing but circuit boards and deformed scraps of copper wire.

Opening a second box, there was a long piece of titanium near the top, about the length of his entire arm and as wide as his hand. Shrugging and figuring that he could just size it down as needed, he grabbed the bit of metal, resting it against the door as he returned the two boxes to their original locations. Grabbing the scrap he'd found, he phazed back out of the shed, flying up to his room.

Dropping the metal fragment onto his bed, Danny closed his eyes, focusing on his powers, concentrating on a very specific change to take place. Seeing the transformation in his mind's eye, he willed one of his ghost powers to the surface, and his eyes lit up green in both pride and relief as he opened them, finding his right arm invisible except for the bones. Grabbing a pencil with his left hand, he fumbled with it for a moment, setting his unseen arm down on the desk on top of a piece of printer paper. Leaning over, he lined the pencil lead up with the spot where his two arm bones diverged at his wrist, drawing a small hash mark on the paper. He made a second hash mark where the bones met back up at the elbow. Lifting his arm, he switched the pencil to his right hand, still visible above the wrist, and doodled in a rough oval shape between the pair of hash marks. Dropping the pencil, he placed his arm over the doodle, comparing the lines he'd drawn with the shape between his radius and ulna.

Nearly an hour was spent perfecting the drawing, but it had been finished, providing Danny with the shape he needed to cut out of the titanium scrap he'd gotten.

Cutting the piece of titanium in half with his ectoplasm, Danny placed half of it under his mattress, hiding it from prying eyes, placing the other half back in the shed before returning to his room and passing out, curling up against his pillow.

- - - - -

Working only at night for about an hour and a half, his garbage can slowly filling each night with slivers of titanium, Danny honed the metal down into the shape he'd drawn on the paper until the quarter-inch-thick piece fit perfectly just inside the lines he'd drawn. Not a perfect oval shape, the irregular shape was perfectly suited for the purpose it would serve. Designed to fit snuggly between the bones in his forearm, it would be held in place by a series of pins phazed into place before being locked into a perpetual state of implanted intangibility, similar to the Time Medallion incident with Dan Phantom a few months back.

The hardest part had finally come, and Danny looked over his work, preparing himself for the second stage of work. Pulling the Gems from their holsters in the Gauntlet, Danny laid them, in the same order as they were in the Gauntlet, on top of the bar of metal, using a pencil to establish just how wide the hollows he would carve into the metal would have to be. Once he'd gotten all four Gems traced out, he dropped the jewels into the Fenton Thermos, tossing that and the Gauntlet into the bottom drawer of his desk.

Focusing his powers into an ethereal green blade, he concentrated the knife into a small laser-like beam, slowly carving through the metal, keeping just on the traced lines. Slowly working his way around the first shape, it didn't take long before a square piece of titanium fell away, and Danny used his ectoplasm to polish the sides to a smooth finish. Repeating these actions, three more pieces of titanium were cut away, each of the resulting holes large enough to house one of the Gems.

Taking the four resulting scraps of titanium in hand, Danny cut them each in half so that they could be re-inserted into the hollows he'd created, allowing the Gems to be placed securely inside the hollows without them simply falling out of the other side of the metal bar. Phazing down into the lab, he grabbed a soldering gun and a small amount of solder, and returned to his room. Using the materials, he re-attached the slices of titanium to the main unit. Once the material had cooled, he honed the bottom of the Gem holster back to a smooth finish, and he then placed it in the bottom drawer next to the Thermos and the original Reality Gauntlet, dropping the remaining unattached pieces of titanium in the drawer as well.

Crawling into bed, Danny assured himself that tomorrow would be the last day he'd work on the new holder for the Reality Gems. _I've got to come up with a name for it anyway_, he thought, drifting off into unconsciousness.

- - - - -

Taking the scraps still remaining from the previous night's work, Danny cut them down to about a quarter thickness and bored a small hole into the center of each. Dropping the Gems into their respective slots, the pieces he'd just cut were placed over the Gems and soldered into place, the holes he'd cut acting as a way for him to touch the Gems once they'd been secured inside the holster. Finally, he polished the metal plate smooth one final time, admiring his work as the last sliver of titanium and solder fell to the carpeted floor.

Closing his eyes, he tried to recall the memory from the month before, trying to remember the order in which Freakshow had pressed the Gems and activated the Gauntlet. All his work depended on him pulling that bit of information from his mind and the titanium serving as a proper conductor. Fingers ran over the flawless metal, the memory blurring and spinning behind his closed eyelids. Slowly, one by one, his fingertips pressed down against the Gems.

Life.

Form.

Fantasy.

Power.

Form.

Fantasy.

Life.

Form.

Life.

Fantasy.

Power.

Opening his eyes, Danny looked down at his creation, watching with a muted sense of satisfaction as the Gems powered up. Sliding his arm, save the bones, into intangibility, Danny slid his invention into place, turning his arm to the side as he pushed a half-dozen titanium pins through his radius and another half-dozen through his ulna, securing it to his arm. Phazing it into intangibility, he returned his arm to the tangible plane, feeling the same hollow sensation in his arm that had been in his chest when Dan had stuck the Time Medallion inside of him. Feeling the surge run through his arm, he raised it, aimed his palm at his desk and concentrated. Seconds later, a small dragon appeared on his keyboard, looked at him, snorted out a plume of ash-gray smoke before curling down over itself, falling asleep. Waving his hand, the creature vanished, and Danny looked at his arm, a smirk spreading across his features. "It doesn't need a name. No one else can use it, so I don't need to name it."

"Time out."


	3. I Am The Manipulator

**Disclaimer:**_ Danny Phantom_ and all related characters and information are the property of Butch Hartman and Viacom International, Inc.

"Time out."

Danny looked over his shoulder, the Gems keeping him from being stalled as the rest of the world froze around him. A pair of clock hands spun into his vision, revealing an ice blue portal from the Ghost Zone. Turning, Danny bowed his head for a moment in respect to the entity that had just entered his room.

"I'm a little surprised to see you taking this course, Danny. After that run-in with your evil alternate future self, I would have assumed you'd…learned the path you're supposed to follow."

"For knowing everything, I'm sure throwing you for a loop," Danny replied. "I'm not using this for my own gain. I just figure it's a way to level the playing field in battle."

Clockwork raised an eyebrow as he shifted into his elder form. "What do you mean by that?"

Danny held up his right hand, creating a tongue of flame in his palm before letting it dissipate. "Even though I can use this as I want, I'm only keeping it for the plain and simple fact of having the hero's advantage in a fight. This way, the next time Skulker or Technus or someone decide that they want to throw a school bus at a group of kids, I can turn it into cotton candy or pillows or teddy bears or something, not to mention the fact that I can just turn them into something harmless instead of actually having to deal with fighting them all the time. One, it saves time, and two, it saves me the trouble of getting my butt handed to me on multiple occasions."

"That's a unique approach to the powers of the Gauntlet," Clockwork said stoically. "And speaking of the Reality Gauntlet, where exactly is the original?"

Opening the bottom drawer, Danny tossed the Gauntlet to the now-child ghost. "I'm actually not sure what I want to do with it, so I guess you can figure something out for me. I was initially going to melt it down, but I have no idea where I'd find a place where I can generate that kind of heat without having someone looking at me funny or wondering what in blazes is going on." Danny blinked. "Hey, I made a joke."

Clockwork raised an eyebrow at the hybrid's comment.

"I was talking about melting down the Gauntlet and then mentioned people wondering what in _blazes_ is going on," Danny explained. "You know, blaze as in big fire…yeah, never mind. My humor is lost on you."

"Your humor is just a bit too immature for me. I actually got it. It wasn't all that funny."

"Spoil sport," Danny huffed. "I don't intend on being all evil and manipulative with the Gauntlet. I might use it on occasion for basic stuff like a piece of candy or doing tricks for the younger kids I deal with, considering I'm still looked down upon by some of the people in town, but never for anything illegal. I'm not a fool, Clockwork. People call me clueless, but never stupid. I see a lot more than people care to acknowledge that I do, and despite my grades, I'm not an idiot."

Clockwork sighed heavily. "Daniel, believe me when I say that I understand what you're saying. I honestly didn't even want to bother you, but the Observants have been on my case since you destroyed the false Gauntlet. They're under the impression that you're trying to act on your own without respect for their laws of non-interference and are threatening to bring you to trial for your actions." Clockwork, shifting into his adult form, looked at the young man that stood before him, watching the subtle shifts in his countenance. Within his mind's eye, he saw the most likely course of the future shift a few times, morphing and warping as Danny's anger spiraled within him, turning from annoyance to full-blown rage and dying back down for a moment before flaring up once more. He had seen this kind of behavior in the hybrid before, in times where his emotions were pulled violently by some action or another. The most recent had been during the Freakshow incident, and it had also happened in a most violent and permanent manner in the alternate future that he and Danny had unmade, pulling the twisted malevolence that was Dan Phantom out of the timestreams for good.

He smiled softly as he transformed into his elder facet, sensing the dying down of Danny's fury, and his mind caught the future that was to happen just as Danny initiated his own transformation and the folds of reality bent and distorted around them.

Looking up at his otherworldly guardian for affirmation of his choice of actions, the phantasm nodded softly. Danny curled the fingers of his right hand inward, his fist closing around the invisible lines of existence, and he yanked himself and the Ghost of Time out of the human world and into the Council Chamber of the Observants, Clockwork tapping the top of his staff before the otherworldly shift completed.

An uproar sounded immediately from the assembled, and some even began shouting proclamations of the ghost child's obvious guilt from their seats among the throng, others decrying Clockwork for defending a child who was so evidently a threat to their kind with the power he'd been allowed to obtain. Moments passed without any end in sight, and the child-form Clockwork looked at his charge, feeling the emotional cataclysm winding through him, knowing that Danny had felt suddenly fearful of his choice, scared that all he had would be stolen from him by the unrelenting and unalloyed Law of the Observants.

A ghost Danny figured for the council elder stood, walking up to a dais jutting out from one wall, and raised his hand, the din of arguments collapsing into silence. Turning his eye on the half-ghost, he spoke, his voice resounding through the chamber so powerfully that crossbreed child felt a hundredth of his size.

"Danny Phantom, known in human form as Daniel Fenton, you come before the High Council, brought here by powers unrightfully obtained and unjustly kept for your own manipulation. We have seen your actions since the day of your creation, watched you once your life became our concern, and in this, we find ourselves fearing for our kind. You are young, volatile, judgmental, and rash. What have you to say for yourself on these charges, informal though they may be?"

Danny looked up, luminous nephrite eyes wavering, his fear outwardly evident only in the minute shudders that ran through his body. "I…" he began, unsure of what to say in defense against these jaundiced protectors of order. "Though it is true that I don't always think things through, and that I am sometimes more of a hindrance and a threat than I am the defender I seek to be, I'm finding my way through my life with powers I don't fully comprehend. Due in large to the activities of my parents, something happened to me that should not even be possible, let alone be allowed to exist. I know that I am an unwanted aberration of twisted half-nature in both worlds, and I…understand that your council, above all others, would prefer that I be either without my powers or under your full jurisdiction. As I walk this fine line between our worlds, I fall under both rules and neither, though I seek to stay within the regulations of the human realms, as that is where I make my home. I seek not to control or to turn others to my whims, but only to be more the…" Danny took a deep breath, "more the hero I want to be for my town and my world."

"You realize, Danny Phantom, that your actions each day are in flagrant violation of our laws of non-interference?"

"Yes, sir, I do, though by that, I would figure that those who violate the borders of my world with evil intent also break this law." Danny raised an eyebrow. "Why am I to be the one made whipping boy by these laws for the crimes of those I fight against?"

Clockwork floated over to his charge, resting his hand on the young man's shoulder, silently calming the anger and hurt boiling inside of him once more, realization of the Council's true action cutting through him worse than any ecto-blast.

Danny shrugged the specter's hand and stepped forward, resisting the urge to use the Gems' power to blast all of the Council into Oblivion, and raised his voice in challenge once more. "You take no action against those who pervade my home realm, yet you seek to make me suffer for their crimes as well as my own. If I understand correctly, you charge me with interference because the fights are taken into the human world, though truly they are started there by ghosts who seek to remove me from the world in order to secure their own paths to power. I don't know what twisted logic you have used in your laws, but I assure you that my removal from the world would only open the floodgates for greater violations by those I constantly return to this dimension." Danny snorted, his mind processing all that he'd heard of the Observants. "Clockwork was right – you do treat life as a parade. You look neither back nor forward, only in the here and now, passing judgment upon those you feel most suited to the purpose of sending a warning, rather than rightfully enacting these laws upon all who violate them."

"Danny Phantom," the Elder spoke, "I will only warn you once to hold your tongue within this Chamber."

Danny blinked, suddenly realizing that the Observant Council had been the reason Clockwork had even become a part of his life. "You act as keepers of order amidst chaos, but as ghosts, as agents of this Chaos, you violate your own laws!" Looking around the room, Danny sneered at the assembled. "You forced Clockwork's hand! You are the reason he toyed with my future, made me suffer for the crimes I had not yet committed! You attack me for the power I contain, yet had you not brought him into this," he said, pointing at the Temporal Master, "I would never have gained the Wail as early as I have." Turning once more, he glared at the Elder. "You got involved in human affairs through an agent able to bend the rules for you, and now, you seek to find a way to remedy your mistake. I've become a greater threat in your eyes because you allowed me to live, and I have gained something that makes me even more dangerous than Dan Phantom, even though I have this while still being on what I at least perceive to be the 'good' side…if that dichotomy even makes any sense to you."

The Elder narrowed his eye at the half-dead teen before him, and Clockwork knew that he was ready to call for the sentence to be passed without even putting the matter to vote. As the Elder raised his hand for silence to resume in the Chamber, the Master of Time floated next to the amalgam child he watched over. "I have said before that the biggest problem with you Observants is that all you do is observe. You look at things with a critical eye, yet you are so entrenched in your own ideals of justice and what you believe is right for our worlds that you fail to see how hypocritical and unjust you really are. For a fifteen-year-old child to see that before you acquiesce to the truth of it is astounding, if not a little embarrassing on your part.

"You want to martyr him for a cause that will only serve to further destroy whatever control you believe you maintain. He defends the world against his demi-kin, and you know that there would be invasions into the human world regardless of the activation of the numerous mechanical portals around the planet, and he is a line of defense in the human world that you want removed for your own gains and unsubstantiated fears."

"Clockwork, you fail to understand what a risk this child presents."

"And you fail to see what a blessing he has been for us. Yes, I understand the power he wields now that the Gems of the Aether are a part of him, but that power has been granted to the most befitting out of all those in both worlds. He is young, but the trials of his powers have given him the wisdom of one far older. He is impetuous, but that comes from the fact that his life calls for split-second decisions, decisions that have and will mean life or death for someone. What would you do should he fail in his Mortalis Obex?"

"My what?" Danny asked, and nearly every eye in the Chamber turned to him.

The Elder looked accusingly at Clockwork. "You make threats against us?"

"No, there are no threats. I do not speak in riddles or in idle jest. You have bothered me on many occasions because of his unique condition, and you know just what his failure would mean, and you also know that it would be guilt, not anger or sadistic lust, that would drive him to that point."

Danny tapped the ghost on the shoulder. "My what, Clockwork?"

"Your Mortalis Obex, something I should have explained a while ago. Literally, it translates from Latin as Death Barrier, and it is that which allows a ghost to retain themselves in this dimension rather than passing on to the next realm of being. For each ghost, they have a single point that they work towards, and in achieving it, will be free to move into the next world. Skulker, for example, seeks the ultimate hunt. However, as you are only partially of our kind, your Mortalis Obex doesn't keep you from passing on. Rather, it is what keeps you alive, maintains your human form despite the fact that the accident in the lab should have, by all accounts, killed you. Should you fail and the Obex be destroyed, you would be one of our number completely and without recourse." He looked to the Elder before turning back to the part-ghost at his side. "Can you figure out my Mortalis Obex?"

"You're meant to pass on?" Danny wondered aloud. "But you're the Master of Time."

"All ghosts pass on, regardless of their power. Now, can you tell me mine?"

Danny fell silent, a pensive furrow in his brow holding steady on his face, his expression otherwise devoid of emotion. Turned completely inward in contemplation, Danny didn't even notice when he fell backwards and landed in a chair Clockwork had summoned for him. Finally, he looked up at his phantom custodian. "You have to keep the streams of time from crossing when they are not supposed to and allow them to interact with one another only when the actions of those involved doesn't mess things up."

"Good. Now can you tell me why there are so many streams of time and why I can let some cross?" Clockwork cast a devious smirk at the Elder as his charge fell silent for another moment.

"Each person is part of their own timestream. Not only do they have a lifespan, but each choice diverts them down another path within the stream. There are mir…my…" Danny struggled with the word, "mar…myriad?" He looked up at Clockwork. "Is the word I'm looking for myriad?"

"If you're looking for something that means countless or infinite, it is."

"There are a myriad number of choices a person makes in their lifetime, and each one moves them in or out of different timestreams almost constantly."

"Good. So how do I complete my task and move on?"

Danny answered without even stopping to really pour over this one. "You have to remain a ghost until time becomes a concept no longer understood or used. Maybe that theorized end of all days? Or just the end of life on both sides of the divide?"

Clockwork turned to the Elder. "And there you have it. He understands much more than you want to give him credit for when he actually has the time to mull over the information he's given. You judge him by watching the confrontations rather than watching him throughout his life, ups and downs. Humans are far more complex than you seem to ever give them credit for, and that will be your greatest failure – underestimating the power of their race. Besides all that, your council put Daniel under my protection and observation. I, alone, am responsible for him, and you have washed your hands of him since the incident with his future self. I fail to understand why you have even maintained a watch on him when you assigned me sole responsibility for his actions."

"Then his guilt will remain over your head when the Gauntlet becomes his gateway to the destruction you know he seeks," the Elder snapped, turning and walking off the dais.

Clockwork motioned for Danny to stay behind, and he floated upwards, coming to the dais and face-to-face with the Elder. "You fail to understand, _Wise One_," he said with a degree of indignation, "that if Daniel should fall into the darker flows of his power, the Gems would guarantee that you would not be around to convict either of us for the crimes he would commit should his eyes ever turn in the direction of this Council, and you have set yourself up for your own fall should he ever suffer his."

"Then I would advise you, Clockwork, to make sure that never happens."

"What happens to you is none of my concern, Elder. My Mortalis Obex would be unaffected by your demise, and without you constantly harping at me to manipulate these poor souls so that you keep your own hands clean of interference, I might actually be able to get something accomplished in my time here. That boy, and the rest of those who reside in both worlds – they are my concern. I help the One to keep the Tapestry from unraveling, and nothing more. You are but a tangle in Their thread, and you know it." With that, Clockwork transformed again, from elder to adult once more, and returned to Danny's side.

"So," Danny asked as they stepped out of the Council Chamber, "what exactly _is_ my Mort…Mortalis Obex?"

"Yours is the one you created the first time you put yourself in the line of fire, the ideals you strive to live up to every waking moment of your life, and the reason you fear Dan Phantom with such a ferocious passion. Any guesses?"

"Mine would be defending people from the ghosts, right?"

"Partially true, but that's still a good answer. After all, you're only fifteen, and I don't expect nearly as much from you, despite what I said in the Chamber. You have every reason to be confused by a lot of what has been going on in your life, especially since the only other currently existent hybrids are a bitter rival of yours and a clone that has less experience than you."

"Have there been others?" Danny asked, somewhere between hope and sorrow.

"There have been a number of them over the years, mostly made that way by clairvoyant powers tearing open the veil that resides between our worlds."

"Psychic powers killed them?"

"No, though that's what some people thought. Remember how you'd nearly fainted after the accident?"

Danny nodded.

"With the clairvoyants, they are gifted with something often referred to as the Sight, and what this gift requires is an open mind's eye, or Third Eye, if you understand chakra points at all. However, since there is an uninhibited channel for a spirit to communicate through, there have been a few occasions where they not only opened a channel to the spiritual realm, but also opened a natural portal. With that kind of gateway suddenly appearing, whatever ectoplasmic entity is nearest had a way out of the Zone. A number of them were like you and Vladimir, however, and only broke through the Zone long enough to be affected by basal ectoplasm."

"What's basal ectoplasm?"

Clockwork reached a hand out, swiping at the air, gathering a small blob of floating ectoplasm. "This. It's the kind that has no sentience, since all it is here for is creating that which is of the Zone. It's like molding clay," he continued, manipulating the small mass with his fingers, gently using his own powers to form the blob into a miniature likeness of himself in his adult form. "We can bend the basal material to our will, altering texture, color, opacity, and whatever other factors we consider to be of importance. Since you had been fused with this, the ghost created, as the ghosts of basal fusions past, was a blank slate upon which you forged your own Obex. For that, you should consider yourself lucky. There were forty-one sentient fusions that ended up doing nothing more than burning the human shell to a husk in really short order. And before you ask, no, was never a case of a sentient ghost moving into a human host where the host survived for more than a year. Despite whatever mental and psychic abilities they had, there is no way they can alter their bodies to work with their acquired ghost powers, and it's like a slow-moving toxin in their systems. What makes basal hybrids special is that they are able to move between realms, as you have experienced with the transformation. Sentient fusions had no such separation of form. They are more like an irremovable overshadow than what you have."

Danny looked at his right hand, clenching it into a fist and lowering it to his side. "Clockwork, is it wrong that I find distinct pleasure in the idea of using the Gems to get rid of the Council?"

"It's a little disconcerting, but after dealing with them for all these millennia, I'd almost be willing to ask you to do so. They don't see their own hypocrisy even though it's staring them in the face. Or the eye, however you want to take that."

Danny smiled at the small joke, feeling himself relaxing, the sinking feeling in his stomach slowly subsiding. "So, what did you tell to the Elder before we left?"

"Nothing of importance, really. I just reminded him that my responsibility is to the One and not them, and that my purpose here was more for the sake of the Tapestry than it was as their go-to man."

"What are those? I mean, the One and the Tapestry?"

"Well, the One is the creator of everything in existence. Your friend Samantha would refer to the One as God. As for the Tapestry, it is the course of existence. Every moment of all the worlds and dimensions is woven by the One into an astral Tapestry. The interwoven strands are the reasons for interaction between the dimensions and between people and all the creatures out there in our worlds. My job, in all truth, is to keep the Threads of the Tapestry from becoming tangled or damaged, such as my job is as Keeper of the Chronology of Being, which is the true title I go by."

"With that kind of a job, why were you made a ghost?"

"Think about it, Danny – what would the world do to me if they knew the power I wielded? The human race fears what it cannot understand, and I would suffer death upon death, incarnated into new forms countless times just to survive. Here, I am able to manipulate and control as I see fit without the torch-toting masses coming after me for my 'dark magic'."

"Sounds like a hard job."

"It is. Many of the Observants often forget that I keep more than this dimension."

Danny looked up at him as they flew along the currents in the Zone. "What do you mean, 'more than this dimension'?"

"This is not the only world I see. There are many others. For example, there are four realities that I can see right now in my head. The first is this one, with the most likely future to happen playing out. The second is one where Dan became your future, so though he has been pulled from this timestream, and thereby this dimension, he became your future in another dimension. The third is a world where you never got powers in the first place. The fourth, and this may be shocking, is a world where your life is a cartoon show chronicling your adventures."

"I'm a TV show? Cool."

"You'd be surprised how many people write and draw about the show."

Danny looked down at his arm, a question popping up in his mind only long enough for Clockwork to smack him lightly atop his head with his staff. "I don't have time to deal with those kinds of antics, so no trying to use the Gauntlet to break through the dimensional divide."

"But these are Reality Gems. I can…" he drifted off, smirking. "I can use these to break through the folds of reality. Time and space are concepts that bend according to my will because of the Gems."

"You'd think that, but it would take an insane amount of power to actually work your way to another actual dimension. Besides, Reality Gems was the human name given to these. In our world, where they originated, they are Gems of the Aether. Imbued with great psychic powers, these Gems are the embodiment of the four principles of ghostly power – life beyond death, the ability to create from nothingness and mold ourselves into what we deem proper images, the control over powers that are supernatural and against the laws of nature, and the power of our aether forms. So, again, no trying to jump between dimensions."

"But you have to do it," Danny countered. "Teach me."

"I have to do no such thing. I exist in all realms at once. It may seem confusing, but I am incarnate in each of the many dimensions all at the same time and with the same powers. My thoughts and memories span the chasms of the multiverse, but not my etheric form."

Bending the Gems to his will once again, Danny moved through the aspects of his own reality, depositing himself in his room, falling soundlessly onto his bed.

* * *

So, what did you think? I know it got a little weird in there, but the idea was burning a hole in my mind for weeks after seeing Reality Trip (I have iTunes) and I finally decided to give it a whirl. The One and the Tapestry are metaphors for the religious ideology I live by, so that's something for another day, time and discussion forum. Feel free to email me with questions (or ask them in the reviews) and I'll get back to you on that as soon as I can.

As for Danny's Mortalis Obex, there is mention throughout the Council meeting of Danny failing, but it is never really explained how. In this story, the reason he is able to maintain a half-ghost form rather than dying is that he believes he is responsible for those who would otherwise be victims to ghost attacks. His failure would be something along the lines of what happened with Dan Phantom or another case of a massive death count because of a ghost, especially if he was in the area and still unable to stop what had happened. In failing the Death Barrier, his human life would end, and he would become a ghost of pure vehemence, worse even than Dan, Plasmius and Pariah all put together. You'll see the Obex thing show up again in the re-write of _Hybrid's Inheritance_, so at least now you have a decent explanation.

Later days,

DigitalPhantom


End file.
